Chapter XV: Part IV: Man and Wife (3)

“It's nothing,” thought Philip. “Only another shadow from a tired brain. Jemmy's talk about my altered looks--the reflection in the shop-windows--the sudden gloom after the dazzling sunlight--that's all, that's all. Sleep, I want sleep.”

When the Governor took his seat with the first Deemster on his right, and motioned Philip to the chair on his left, an involuntary murmur passed over the chamber at the contrast there presented--the one Deemster very old, with round, russet face, quick, gleaming eyes, and a comfortable, youthful, even merry expression; the other, very young, with long, pallid, powerful face, large eyes, and a tired look of age.

Philip presented his commission received from the Home Secretary, and the oath of office was administered to him. Kissing a stained copy of a leather-bound Testament, he repeated the words after the Governor in a thick croak that seemed to hack the air--

“By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that God hath miraculously wrought in heaven above and on the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I, Philip Christian, do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or hate, loss or gain, consanguinity or affinity, envy or malice, execute the laws of this Isle justly, betwixt our Sovereign Lady the Queen and her subjects within this Isle, and betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish.”

As Philip pronounced these words, he was conscious of only one face in that assembly. It was not the face of the Governor, of the Bishop, of any dignitary of Church or State--but a rugged, eager, dark face over a black beard in the grip of a great brown hand, with sparkling eyes, parted lips, and a look of boyish pride--it was the face of Pete.

“It only remains for me,” said the Governor, “to congratulate your Honour on the high office to which it has pleased Her Majesty to appoint you, and to wish you long life and health to fulfil its duties, with blameless credit to yourself and distinction to your country.”

There was some other speaking, and then Philip replied. He spoke clearly, firmly, and well. A reference to his grandfather provoked applause. His modesty and natural manner made a strong impression. “His Excellency is not so far wrong, after all,” was the common whisper.

Some further business, and the Council broke up for general gossip. Then, on the pavement outside, while the carriages were coming in line, there were renewed congratulations, invitations, and warnings. The Governor invited Philip to dinner. He excused himself, saying he had promised to dine with his aunt at Ballure. The ladies warned him to spare himself, and recommended a holiday; and then the Clerk of the Rolls, proud as a peacock, strutting here and there and everywhere, and assuming the airs of a guardian, cried, “Can't yet, though, for he holds his first court in Ramsey tomorrow morning.... Put on the cloak, Christian. It will be cold driving. Good men are scarce.”

An open landau came up at length, with Jem-y-Lord on the box-seat, and Pete walking by the horse's head, smoothing its neck and tickling its ears.

“Why, you were talking of the young man, Christian, and behold ye, here's the great fellow himself. Well, young chap,” slapping Pete on the back, “see your Deemster take the oath, eh?”

“He's my cousin,” said Philip.

“Cousin! Is he, then--can he perhaps be--Ah! yes, of course, certainly------” The good man stammered and stopped, remembering the marriage of Philip's father. He opened the carriage door and stood aside for Philip, but Philip said--

“Step in, Pete;” and, with a shamefaced look, Pete rolled into the carriage. Philip took the seat beside him, amid a buzz of voices from the people standing about the door.

“Well, as you like; good day, then, boy, good day,” said the Clerk of the Rolls, clashing the door back. The carriage began to move.

“Good day, your Honour,” cried several out of the crowd.

Philip raised his hat. The hats of the men went up to him. Some of the girls were wiping their eyes.

XIV.

While Pete and Philip were driving over the road from Douglas, Kate was sitting with the child on her lap before the fire in Elm Cottage. Her eyes were restless, her manner agitated. She looked out at the window from time to time. The setting sun behind the house still held the day with horizontal shafts of light in the spring green of the transparent leaves.

“Wouldn't you like to see the procession to-night, Nancy?” she said.

“Aw, mortal,” said Nancy. “But I won't get lave, though. 'Take care of my two girls,' says he----”

“You may go, Nancy; I'll see to baby,” said Kate.

“But the man himself, woman; he'll be coming home as hungry as a hunter.”

“I'll see to his supper, too,” said Kate. “Carry the key with you that you may let yourself in, and be back at half-past seven.”

Then Nancy began to fly about the kitchen like sputter-ings out of the frying-pan--filling the kettle, lighting the lamp, and getting together the baby's night-clothes. Kate watched her and glanced at the clock.

“Was the town quiet when you were out for the bacon, Nancy?” she said.

“Quiet enough,” said Nancy. “Everybody flying off Le-zayre way already--except what were making for the quay.”

“Is the steamer sailing to-night, then?''

“Yes, the _Peveril_; but not water enough to float her till half-past seven, they were saying. Here's the lil one's nightdress, and here's her binder, bless her--just big enough for a bandage for a person's wrist if she sprained it churning.”

“Lay them on the fender to air, Nancy--I'll not undress baby yet awhile. And see--it's nearly seven.”

“I'll be pinning my shawl on and away like the wind,” said Nancy. “The bogh!” she said, with the pin between her teeth. “She's off again. Do you really think, now, the angels in heaven are as sweet and innocent, Kirry? I don't. They can't if they're grown up. And having to climb Jacob's ladder, poor things, they must be. Then, if they're men--but that's ridiculous, anyway.”

“The clock is striking, Nancy. No use going when everything's over,” said Kate, and the foot with which she rocked the child went faster now that the little one was asleep.

“Sakes alive! Let me tie the strings of my bonnet, woman. Pity you can't come yourself, Kitty. But if they're worth their salt they'll be whipping round this way and giving you a lil tune, anyway.”

“Have you got the key, Nancy?”

“Yes, and I'll be back in an hour. And mind you put baby to bed soon, and mind you--and mind you----”

With as many warnings as if she had been mistress and Kate the servant, Nancy backed herself out of the house. It was now dark outside.

Kate rose immediately, put the child in the cradle, and began to lay the table for Pete's supper--the cruet, the plates, the teapot on the hob to warm, and then--by force of habit--two cups and saucers. But sight of the cups awakened her to painful consciousness. She put one of them back in the cupboard, broke the coal on the fire, settled the kettle up to the blaze, fixed the Dutch oven with three rashers of bacon before the bars, then lit a candle, and, with a nervous look around, turned to go upstairs.

In the bedroom she drew on her cloak, pinned her hat and veil with trembling fingers, then took her purse from her pocket and emptied its contents onto the dressing-table.

“Not mine,” she thought. And standing before the mirror at that moment, she caught sight of her earrings. “I must take nothing of his,” she told herself, and she raised her hands to her ears. Then her heart smote her. “As if Pete would ever think of such things,” she thought. “No, not if I took everything he has in the world. And must _I_ be thinking of them?... Yet I cannot--I will not take them with me.”

She opened a drawer and hurried everything into it--the money, the earrings, the keeper off her finger, and then she paused at the touch of the wedding-ring. A superstitious instinct restrained her. Yet the ring was the badge of her broken covenant. “With this ring I thee wed----” She tore off the wedding-ring also, and cast it with the rest.

“He will find them,” she thought. “There will be nothing else to tell him what has happened. He will come, and I shall be gone. He will call, and there will be no answer. He will look for me, and I shall be lost to him for ever. Not a word left behind. Not a line to say, 'Thank you and good-bye and God bless you, dear Pete, for all your love and goodness to rae.”'

It was cruel--very cruel--yet what could she write? What could she say that had not better be left unsaid? The least syllable--no, the uncertainty would be kinder. Perhaps Pete would think she was dead--perhaps that she had destroyed herself. Even that would not be so bitter as the truth. He would get over it--he would become reconciled. “No,” she thought, “I can write nothing--I can leave no message.”

She shut the drawer quickly, and picked up the candle. As she did so, the shadow of herself moved about her. It mounted from the floor to the wall, from the wall to the ceiling. When she walked it seemed to be on top of her, hanging over her, pressing down on her, crushing her. She grew cold and sick, and hastened to the door. The room was full of other shadows--the memories of sleepless nights and of painful awakenings. These stared at her from every familiar thing--the watch ticking in its stand on the mantelpiece, the handle of the wardrobe, the pink curtains of the bed, the white pillow beneath them. She felt like a frightened child. With a terrified glance over her shoulder she crept out of the room.

Being downstairs again, she breathed more freely. There was light all about her, and the hall-parlour was bright and warm. The kettle was now singing in the cheerful blaze, the cat was purring on the rug, and there was a smell of bacon slowly frying. She looked at the clock--it was a quarter after seven. “Time to waken baby,” she thought.

She took from a chest the child's outdoor clothes--a robe, a pelisse, and a white hood. Her fingers had touched a scarlet hood in a cardboard box, but “not that” she thought, and left it. She spread the clothes about her chair, and then lifted the little one from the cradle to her pillowing arm. The child awoke as she raised it, and made a fretful cry, which she smothered in a gurgling kiss.

“I can love the darling without shame now,” she thought. “It's sweet face will reproach me no more.”

With soft cooings at the baby's cheek, she was stooping to take the robe that lay at her feet, when her eyes fell on the round place in the cradle where the child had been. That made her think again of Pete. He would come home and find the little nest cold and empty. It would kill him; it would be a second bereavement. Was it not enough that she should go away herself? Must she rob him of the child as well? He loved it; he doted on it. It was the light of his eyes, the joy of his life. To lose it would be a blow like the blow of death.

Yet could a mother leave her child behind her? Impossible! The full tide of motherhood came over her, and its tender selfishness swept down everything. “I cannot,” she thought; “come what may, I cannot and I will not leave her.” And then she reached her hand for the child's pelisse.

“It would be a kind of atonement, though,” she thought. To leave the little one to Pete would be making amends in some sort for the wrong that she was doing him. To deny herself the sight of the child's sweet face day by day and hour by hour--that would be a punishment also, and she deserved to be punished. “Can I leave her?” she thought. “Can I? Oh, what mother could bear it? No, no--never, never! And yet I ought--I must--Oh, this is terrible!”

In the midst of this agony of uncertainty, thinking of Pete and of the wrong she had done him, yet pressing the child to her breast with trembling arms, as if some one were tearing it away, the babe itself settled everything. Making some inarticulate whimper of communication, it nuzzled up to her, its eyes closed, but its head working against her bosom with the instinct of suckling, though it had never sucked.

“I'm only half a mother, after all,” she thought.

The highest joys, the deepest rights of motherhood had been denied to her--the child taking from the mother, the mother giving to the child, the child and the mother one--: this had not been hers.

“My little baby can live without me,” she thought. “If I leave her, she will never miss me.”

She nearly broke down at that thought, and almost let her purpose slip. It was like God's punishment in advance, God's hand directing her--thus to withdraw the child from dependence on herself.

“Yes, I must leave her with Pete,” she thought.

She put the child back into the cradle, half dressed as it was, and rocked it until it slept again. Then she hung over the tiny bed as a mother hangs over the little coffin that is soon to be shut up from her eyes for ever. Her tears rained down on the small counterpane. “My sweet baby I my little Katherine! I may never kiss you again--never see you any more'--you may grow up to be a woman and know nothing of your mother!”

The clock ticked loud in the quiet room--it was twenty-five minutes past seven.

“One kiss more, my little darling. If they ever tell you... they'll say because your mother left you... Oh, will she think I did not love her? Hush!”

Through the walls of the house there came the sound of a band playing at a distance. She looked at the clock again--it was nearly half-past seven. Almost at the same moment there was the rumble of carriage-wheels on the road. They stopped in the lane that ran between the chapel and the end of the garden.

Kate rose from her knees and opened the door softly. The house had been as a dungeon to her, and she was flying from it like a prisoner escaping. A shrill whistle pierced the air. The _Peveril_ was leaving the quay. Through the streets there was a sound as of water running over stones. It was the scuttling of the feet of the townspeople as they ran to meet the procession.

She stepped out. The garden was dark and quiet as a prison yard; Hardly a leaf stirred, but the moon was breaking through the old fir-tree as she lifted her troubled face to the untroubled sky. She stood and listened. The band was coming nearer. She could hear the thud of the big drum.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Pete was there. He was helping at Philip's triumph. That was the beat of his great heart made audible.

At this her own heart stopped for a moment. She grew chill at the thought of the brave man who asked no better lot than to love and cherish her, and at the memory of the other upon whose mercy she had cast herself. The band stopped. There was a noise like the breaking of a mighty rocket in the sky. The people were cheering and clapping hands. Then a clearer sound struck her ear. It was the clock inside the house chiming the half-hour.

Nancy would be back soon.

Kate listened intently, inclining her head inwards. If the child had awakened at that instant, if it had stirred and cried, she must have gone back for good. She returned for one moment and flung herself over the cradle again. One spasm more of lingering tenderness. “Good-bye, my little one! I am leaving you with him, darling, because he loves you dearly. You will grow up and be a good, good girl to him always. Good-bye, my pet! My precious, my precious! You will reward him for all he has done for me. You are half of myself, dearest--the innocent half. Yes, you will wipe out your mother's sin. You will be all he thinks I am, but never have been. Farewell, my sweet Katherine, my little, darling baby--good-bye--farewell--good-bye!”

She leapt up and fled out of the house at last, on tiptoe, like a thief, pulling the door after her.

When she heard the click of the lock she felt both wretchedness and exultation--immense agony and immense relief. If little Katherine were to cry now, she could not return to her. The door was closed, the house was shut, the prison was left behind. And behind her, too, were the treachery, the duplicity, and deceit of ten stifling months.

She hurried through the garden to a side-door in the wall leading to the lane. The path was like a wave of the sea to her stumbling feet. Her breathing was short, her sight was weak, her temples were beating audibly. Half across the garden something touched her dress, and she made a faint scream. It was Pete's dog, Dempster. He was looking up at her out of the darkness of the bushes. By the light through the blind of the house she could see his bat's ears and watchful eyes.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The band had begun again. It was coming nearer. Philip! Philip! He was her only refuge now. All else was a blank.

The side-door had been little used. Its hinges and bolt were rusty and stiff. She broke her nails in opening it. From the other side came the light jingle of a curb chain, and over the wall hovered a white sheet of smoking light.

The carriage was in the lane, and the driver--Philip's servant, Jem-y-Lord--stood with the door open. Kate stumbled on the step and fell into the seat. The door was closed.

Then a new thought smote her. It was about the child, about Philip, about Pete. In leaving the little one behind her, though she had meant it so unselfishly, she had done the one thing that must be big with consequences. It would bring its penalty, its punishment, its retribution. Stop! She would go back even yet. Her face was against the glass; she was struggling with the strap. But the carriage was moving. She heard the rumble of the wheels; it was like a deafening reverberation from the day of doom. Then her senses dwaled away and the carriage drove on.

XV.

Outside Ballure House there was a crowd which covered the garden, the fence, the high-road, and the top of the stone wall opposite. The band had ceased to play, and the people were shouting, clapping hands, and cheering. At the door--which was open--Philip stood bareheaded, and a shaft of the light in the house behind him lit up a hundred of the eager faces gathered in the darkness. He raised his hand for silence, but it was long before he was allowed to speak. Salutations rugged, rough--almost rude--but hearty to the point of homeliness, and affectionate to the length of familiarity, flew at his head from every side. “Good luck to you, boy!”--“Bravo for Ramsey!”--“The Christians for your life!”--“A chip of the ould block--Dempster Christian the Sixth!”--“Hush, man, he's spaking!”--“Go it, Phil!”--“Give it fits, boy!”--“Hush! hush!”

“Fellow-townsmen,” said Philip--his voice swung like a quivering bell over a sea,--“you can never know how much your welcome has moved me. I cannot say whether in my heart of hearts I am more proud of it or more ashamed. To be ashamed of it altogether would dishonour _you_, and to be too proud of it would dishonour _me_, I am not worthy of your faith and good-fellowship. Ah!”--he raised his hand to check a murmur of dissent (the crowd was now hushed from end to end)--“let me utter the thought of all. In honouring me you are thinking of others also ['No,' 'Yes'); you are thinking of my people--above all, of one who was laid under the willows yonder, a wrecked, a broken, a disappointed man--my father, God rest him! I will not conceal it from you--his memory has been my guide, his failures have been my lightship, his hopes my beacon, his love my star. For good or for evil, my anchor has been in the depths of his grave. God forbid that I should have lived too long under the grasp of a dead hand. It was my aim to regain what he had lost, and this day has witnessed its partial reclamation. God grant I may not have paid too dear for such success.”

There were cries of “No, sir, no.”

He smiled faintly and shook his head. “Fellow-countrymen, you believe I am worthy of the name I bear. There is one among you, an old comrade, a tried and trusted friend, whose faith would be a spur if it were not a reproach----”

His voice was breaking, but still it pealed over the sea of heads. “Well, I will try to do my duty--from this hour onwards you shall see me try. Fellow-Manxmen, you will help me for the honour of the place I fill, for the sake of our little island, and--yes, and for my own sake also, I know you will--to be a good man and an upright judge. But”--he faltered, his voice could barely support itself--“but if it should ever appear that your confidence has been misplaced--if in the time to come I should seem to be unworthy of this honour, untrue to the oath I took to-day to do God's justice between man and man, a wrongdoer, not a righter of the wronged, a whited sepulchre where you looked for a tower of refuge--remember, I pray of you, my countrymen, remember, much as you may be suffering then, there will be one who will be suffering more--that one will be myself.”

The general impression that night was that the Deemster's speech had not been a proper one. Breaking up with some damp efforts at the earlier enthusiasm, the people complained that they were like men who had come for a jig and were sent home in a wet blanket. There should have been a joke or two, a hearty word of congratulation, a little natural glorification of Ramsey, and a quiet slap at Douglas and Peel and Castletown, a few fireworks, a rip-rap or two, and some general illumination. “But sakes alive! the solemn the young Dempster was! And the melancholy! And the mystarious!”

“Chut!” said Pete. “There's such a dale of comic in you, boys. Wonder in the world to me you're not kidnapped for pantaloonses. Go home for all and wipe your eyes, and remember the words he's been spaking. I'm not going to forget them myself, anyway.”

Handing over the big drum to little Jonaique, Pete turned to go into the house. Auntie Nan was in the hall, hopping like a canary about Philip, in a brown silk dress that rustled like withered ferns, hugging him, drawing him down to the level of her face, and kissing him on the forehead. The tears were raining over the autumn sunshine of her wrinkled cheeks, and her voice was cracking between a laugh and a cry.

“My boy! My dear boy! My boy's boy! My own boy's own boy!”

Philip freed himself at length, and went upstairs without turning his head, and then Auntie Nan saw Pete standing in the doorway.

“Is it you, Pete?” she said with an effort. “Won't you come in for a moment? No?”

“A minute only, then--just to wish you joy, Miss Christian, ma'am,” said Pete.

“And you, too, Peter. Ah!” she said, with a bird-like turn of the head, “you must be a proud man to-night, Pete.”

“Proud isn't the word for it, ma'am--I'm clane beside myself.”

“He took a fancy to you when you were only a little barefooted boy, Pete.”

“So he did, ma'am.”

“And now that he's Deemster itself he owns you still.”

“Aw, lave him alone for that, ma'am.”

“Did you hear what he said about you in his speech. It isn't everybody in his place would have done that before all, Pete.”

“'Deed no, ma'am.”

“He's true to his friends, whatever they are.”

“True as steel.”

The maid was carrying the dishes into the dining-room, and Auntie Nan said in a strained way, “You won't stay to dinner, Pete, will you? Perhaps you want to get home to the mistress. Well, home is best for all of us, isn't it? Martha, I'll tell the Deemster myself that dinner is on the table. Well, good-night, Peter. I'm always so glad to see you.”

She was whisking about to go upstairs, but Pete had taken one step into the dining-room, and was gazing round with looks of awe.

“Lord alive, Miss Christian, ma'am, what feelings now-barefooted boy, you say? You're right there, and cold and hungry too, sleeping in the gable-house with the cow, and not getting much but the milk I was staling from her, and a leathering at the ould man for that. Philip fetched me in here one evenin'--that was the start, ma'am. See that pepper-and-salt egg on the string there? It's a Tommy Noddy's. Philip got it nesting up Gob-ny-Garvain. Nearly cost him his life, though. You see, ma'am, Tommy Noddy has only one, and she fights like mad for it. We were up forty fathom and better, atop of a cave, and had two straight rocks below us in the sea, same as an elephant's hoofs, you know, walking out on the blue floor. And Phil was having his lil hand on the ledge where the egg was keeping, when swoop came the big white wings atop of his bare head. If I hadn't had a stick that day, ma'am, it would have been heaven help the pair of us. The next minute Tommy Noddy was going splash down the cliffs, all feathers and blood together, or Philip wouldn't have lived to be Dempster.... Aw, frightened you, have I, ma'am, for all it's so long ago? The heart's a quare thing, now, isn't it? Got no yesterday nor to-morrow neither. Well, good-night, ma'am.” Pete was making for the door, when he looked down and said, “What's this, at all? Down, Dempster, down!”

The dog had came trotting into the hall as Pete was going out. He was perking up his big ears and wagging his stump of a tail in front of him.

“My dog, ma'am? Yes, ma'am, and like its master in some ways. Not much of itself at all, but it has the blood in it, though, and maybe it'll come out better in the next generation. Looking for me, are you, Dempster? Let's be taking the road, then.”

“Perhaps you're wanted at home, Pete?”

“Wouldn't trust. Good night, ma'am.” Auntie Nan hopped upstairs in her rustling dress, relieved and glad in the sweet selfishness of her love to get rid of Pete and have Philip to herself.

XVI.

Pete went off whistling in the darkness, with the dog driving ahead of him. “I'm to blame, though,” he thought. “Should have gone home directly.”

The town was now quiet, the streets were deserted, and Pete began to run. “She'd be alone, too. That must have been Nancy in the crowd yonder by Mistress Beatty's. 'Lowed her out to see the do, it's like. Ought to be back now, though.”

As Pete came near to Elm Cottage, the moon over the tree-tops lit up the panes of the upper windows as with a score of bright lamps. One step more, and the house was dark.

“She'll be waiting for me. Listening, too, I'll go bail.”

He was at the gate by this time, and the dog was panting at his feet with its nose close to the lattice.

“Be quiet, dog, be quiet.”

Then he raised the latch without a sound, stepped in on tiptoe, and closed the gate as silently behind him.

“I'll have a game with her; I'll take her by surprise.”

His eyes began to dance with mischief, like a child's, and he crept along the path with big cat strides, half doubled up, and holding his breath, lest he should laugh aloud.

“The sweet creatures! A man shouldn't frighten them, though,” he thought.

When he reached the porch he went down on all fours, and began mewing like a mournful tom-cat near to the bottom of the door. Then he listened with his ear to the jamb. He expected a faint cry of alarm, the raucous voice of Nancy Joe, and the clatter of feet towards the porch. There was not a sound.

“She's upstairs,” he thought, and stepped back to look up at the front of the house. There was no light in the rooms above.

“I know what it is. Nancy is not home yet, and Kirry's fallen asleep at the rocking.”

He stole up to the window and tried to look into the hall, but the blind was down, and he could not see much through the narrow openings at the sides of it.

“She's sleeping, that's it. The house was quiet and she dropped off, rocking the lil one, that's all.”

He scraped a handful of the light gravel and flung a little of it at the window. “That'll remind her of something,” he thought, and he laughed under his breath.

Then he listened again with his ear at the sill. There was no noise within. He flung more gravel and waited, thinking he might catch her breathing, but he could hear nothing.

Then rising hurriedly and throwing off his playfulness, he strode to the door and tried to open it. The door was locked. He returned to the window.

“Kate!” he called softly. “Kate! Are you there? Do you hear me? It's Pete. Don't be frightened, Kate, bogh!”

There was no response. He could hear the beat of the sea on the shore. The dog had perched himself on one end of the window sill and was beginning to whine.

“What's this at all? She can't be out. Couldn't take the child anyway. Where's that Nancy? What right had the woman to lave her? She has fainted, being left alone; that's what's going doing.”

He tried to open the window, but the latch was shot. Then he tried the other windows, and the back door, and the window above the hall, which he reached from the roof of the porch; but they would not stir. When he returned to the hall window, the white blind was darker. The lamp inside the room was going out.

The moonlight was dripping down on him through the leaves of the trees. He found some matches beside his pipe in his side pocket, struck one, and looked at the sash, then took out his clasp knife to remove the pane under the latch. His hand trembled and shook and burst through the glass with a jerk. It cut his wrist, but he felt the wound no more than if it had been the glass instead of his arm that bled. He thrust his hand through, shot back the latch, then pushed up the sash, and clambered into the room past the blind. The cat, sitting on the ledge inside, rubbed against his hand and purred.

“Kirry! Kate!” he whispered.

The lamp had given up its last gleam with the puff of wind from the window, and, save for the slumbering fire, all was dark within the house. He hardly dared to drop to his feet for fear of treading on something. When he was at last in the middle of the floor he stood with legs apart, struck another match, held the light above his head, and looked down and around, like a man in a cave.

There was nothing. The child, awakened by the draught of the night air, began to cry from the cradle. He took it up and hushed it with baby words of tenderness in a breaking voice. “Hush, bogh, hush! Mammie will come to it, then. Mammie will come for all.”

He lit a candle and crept through the house, carrying the light about with him. There was no sign anywhere until he came to the bedroom, when he saw that the hat and cloak of Kate's daily wear had gone. Then he knew that he was a broken-hearted man. With a cry of desolation he stopped in his search and came heavily downstairs.

He had been warding off the moment of despair, but he could do so no longer now. The empty house and the child, the child and the empty house; these allowed of only one interpretation. “She's gone, bogh, she's left us; she wasn't willing to stay with us, God forgive her!”

Sitting on a stool with the little one on his knees, he sobbed while the child cried--two children crying together. Suddenly he leapt up. “I'm not for believing it,” he thought. “What woman alive could do the like of it? There isn't a mother breathing that hasn't more bowels. And she used to love the lil one, and me too--and does, and does.”

He saw how it was. She was ill, distraught, perhaps even--God help her I--perhaps even mad. Such things happened to women after childbirth--the doctor himself had said as much. In the toils of her bodily trouble, beset by mental terrors, she had fled away from her baby, her husband, and her home, pursued by God knows what phantoms of disease. But she would get better, she would come back.

“Hush, bogh, hush, then,” he whimpered tenderly. “Mammie will come home again. Still and for all she'll come back.”

There was the click of a key in the lock, and he crept back to the stool. Nancy came in, panting and perspiring.

“Dear heart alive! what a race I've had to get home,” she said, puffing the air of the night.

She was throwing off her bonnet and shawl, and talking before looking round.

“Such pushing and scrooging, you never seen the like, Kirry. Aw, my best Sunday bonnet, only wore at me once, look at the crunched it is! But what d'ye think now? Poor Christian Killip's baby is dead for all. Died in the middle of the rejoicings. Aw, dear, yes, and the band going by playing 'The Conquering Hero' the very minute. Poor thing! she was distracted, and no wonder. I ran round to put a sight on the poor soul, and----why, what's going wrong with the lamp, at all? Is that yourself on the stool, Kirry? Pete, is it? Then where's the mistress?”

She plucked up the poker, and dug the fire into a blaze. “What's doing on you, man? You've skinned your knuckles like potato peel. Man, man, what for are you crying, at all?”

Then Pete said in a thick croak, “Hould your bull of a tongue, Nancy, and take the child out of my arms.”

She took the baby from him, and he rose to his feet as feeble as an old man.

“Lord save us!” she cried. “The window broke, too. What's happened?”

“Nothing,” growled Pete.

“Then what's coming of Kirry? I left her at home when I went out at seven.”.

“I'm choking with thirst, woman. Can't you be giving a man a drink of something?”

He found a dish of milk on the table, where the supper had been laid, and he gulped it down at a mouthful.

“She's gone--that's what it is. I see it in your face.” Then going to the foot of the stairs, she called, “Kirry! Kate! Katherine Cregeen!”

“Stop that!” shouted Pete, and he drew her back from the stairs.

“Why aren't you spaking, then?” she cried. “If you're man enough to bear the truth, I'm woman enough to hear it.”

“Listen to me, Nancy,” said Pete, with uplifted fist. “I'm going out for an hour, and till I'm back, stay you here with the child, and say nothing to nobody.”

“I knew it!” cried Nancy. “That's what she hurried me out for. Aw, dear! Aw, dear! What for did you lave her with that man this morning?”

“Do you hear me, woman?” said Pete; “say nothing to nobody. My heart's lying heavy enough already. Open your lips, and you'll kill me straight.”

Then he went out of the house, staggering, stumbling, bent almost double. His hat lay on the floor; he had gone bareheaded.

He turned towards Sulby. “She's there,” he thought “Where else should she be? The poor, wandering lamb wants home.”

XVII.

The bar-room of “The Manx Fairy” was full of gossips 'that night, and the puffing of many pipes was suspended at a story that Mr. Jelly was telling.

“Strange enough, I'm thinking. 'Deed, but it's mortal strange. Talk about tale-books--there's nothing in the 'Pilgrim's Progress' itself to equal it. The son of one son coming home Dempster, with processions and bands of music, at the very minute the son of the other son is getting kicked out of the house same as a dog.”

“Strange uncommon,” said John the Widow, and other voices echoed him.

Jonaique looked round the room, expecting some one to question him. As nobody did so, except with looks of inquiry, he said, “My ould man heard it all. He's been tailor at the big house since the time of Iron Christian himself.”

“Truth enough,” said Cæsar.

“And he was sewing a suit for the big man in the kitchen when the bad work was going doing upstairs.”

“You don't say!”

“'You've robbed me!' says the Ballawhaine.”

“Dear heart alive!” cried Grannie. “To his own son, was it?”

“'You've cheated me!' says he, 'you deceaved me, you've embezzled my money and broke my heart!' says he. 'I've spent a fortune on you, and what have you brought me back?' says he. 'This,' says he, 'and this--and this--barefaced forgeries, all of them!' says he.”

“The Lord help us!” muttered Cæsar.

“'They're calling me a miser, aren't they?' says he. 'I grind my people to the dust, do I? What for, then? _Whom_ for? I've been a good father to you, anyway, and a fool, too, if nobody knows it!' says he.”

“Nobody! Did he say nobody, Mr. Jelly?” said Cæsar, screwing up his mouth.

“'If you'd had _my_ father to deal with,' says he, 'he'd have turned you out long ago for a liar and a thief.' 'My God, father,' says Ross, struck silly for the minute. 'A thief, d'ye hear me?' says the Ballawhaine; 'a thief that's taken every penny I have in the world, and left me a ruined man.'”

“Did he say that?” said Cæsar.

“He did, though,” said Jonaique. “The ould man was listening from the kitchen-stairs, and young Ross snaked out of the house same as a cur.”

“And where's he gone to?” said Cæsar.

“Gone to the devil, I'm thinking,” said Jonaique.

“Well, he'd be good enough for him with a broken back--pity the ould man didn't break it,” said Cæsar. “But where is the wastrel now?”

“Gone to England over with to-night's packet, they're saying.”

“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” said Cæsar.

A grunt came out of the corner from behind a cloud of smoke. “You've your own rasons for saying so, Cæsar,” said the husky voice of Black Tom. “People were talking and talking one while there that he'd be 'bezzling somebody's daughter, as well as the ould miser's money.”

“Answer a fool according to his folly,” muttered Cæsar; and then the door jerked open, and Pete came staggering into the room. Every pipe shank was lowered in an instant, and Grannie's needles ceased to click.

Pete was still bareheaded, his face was ghastly white, and his eyes wandered, but he tried to bear himself as if nothing had happened. Smiling horribly, and nodding all round, as a man does sometimes in battle the moment the bullet strikes him, he turned to Grannie and moved his lips a little as if he thought he was saying something, though he uttered no sound. After that he took out his pipe, and rammed it with his forefinger, then picked a spill from the table, and stooped to the fire for a light.

“Anybody--belonging--me--here?” he said, in a voice like a crow's, coughing as he spoke, the flame dancing over the pipe mouth.

“No, Pete, no,” said Grannie. “Who were you looking for, at all?”

“Nobody,” he answered. “Nobody partic'lar. Aw, no,” he said, and he puffed until his lips quacked, though the pipe gave out no smoke. “Just come in to get fire to my pipe. Must be going now. So long, boys! S'long! Bye-bye, Grannie!”

No one answered him. He nodded round the room again and smiled fearfully, crossed to the door with a jaunty roll, and thus launched out of the house with a pretence of unconcern, the dead pipe hanging upside down in his mouth, and his head aside, as if his hat had been tilted rakishly on his uncovered hair.

When he had gone the company looked into each other's faces in surprise and fear, as if a ghost in broad daylight had passed among them. Then Black Tom broke the silence.

“Men,” said he, “that was a d------ lie.”

“Si------” began Cæsar, but the protest foundered in his dry throat.

“Something going doing in Ramsey,” Black Tom continued. “I believe in my heart I'll follow him.”

“I'll be going along with you, Mr. Quilliam,” said Jonaique.

“And I,” said John the Clerk.

“And I”--“And I,” said the others, and in half a minute the room was empty.

“Father,” whimpered Grannie, through the glass partition, “hadn't you better saddle the mare and see if any thing's going wrong with Kirry?”

“I was thinking the same myself, mother.”

“Come, then, away with you. The Lord have mercy on all of us!”

XVIII.

As soon as he was out of earshot Pete began to run. Within half an hour he was back at Elm Cottage. “She'll be home by this time,” he told himself, but he dared not learn the truth too suddenly. Creeping up to the hall window, he listened at the broken pane. The child was crying, and Nancy Joe was talking to herself, and sobbing as she bathed the little one.

“Bless its precious heart, it's as beautiful as the angels in heaven. I've bathed her mother on the same knee a hundred times. 'Deed have I, and a thousand times too. Mother, indeed! What sort of mothers are in now at all? She must have a heart-as hard as a stone to lave the like of it. Can't be a drop of nature in her.... Goodness, Nancy, what are saying for all? Kate is it? Your own little Kirry, and you blackening her! Aw, dear!--aw, dear! The bogh!--the bogh!”

Pete could not go in. He crept back to the cabin in the garden and leaned against it to draw his breath and think. Then he noticed that the dog was on the path with its long tongue hanging over its jaw. It stopped its panting to whine woefully, and then it turned towards the darker part of the garden.

“He's telling me something,” thought Pete.

A car rattled down the side road at that moment, and the light of its lamp shot through the bushes to his feet.

“The ould gate must be open,” he thought.

He looked and saw that it was, and then a new light dawned on him.

“She's gone up to Philip's,” he told himself. “She's gone by Claughbane to Ballure to find me.”

Five minutes afterwards he was knocking at Ballure House. His breath was coming in gusts, perspiration was standing in beads on his face, and his head was still bare, but he was carrying himself bravely as if nothing were amiss. His knock was answered by the maid, a tall girl of cheerful expression, in a black frock, a white apron, and a snow-white cap. Pete nodded and smiled at her.

“Anybody been here for me? No?” he asked.

“No, sir, n--o, I think not,” the girl answered, and as she looked at Pete her face straightened.

There was a rustling within as of autumn leaves, and then a twittering voice cried, “Is it Capt'n Quilliam, Martha?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Some whispered conference took place at the dining-room door, and Auntie Nan came hopping through the hall. But Pete was already moving away in the darkness.

“Shall I call the Deemster, Peter?”

“Aw, no, ma'am, no, not worth bothering him. Good everin', Miss Christian, ma'am, good everin' to you.”

Auntie Nan and Martha were standing in the light at the open door when the iron gate of the garden swung to with a click, and Pete swung across the road.

He was making for the lane which goes down to the shore at the foot of Ballure Glen. “No denying it,” he thought. “It must be true for all. The trouble in her head has driven her to it. Poor girl, poor darling!”

He had been fighting against an awful idea, and the quagmire of despair had risen to his throat at last. The moon was behind the cliffs, and he groped his way through the shadows at the foot of the rocks like one who looks for something which he dreads to find. He found nothing, and his catchy breathing lengthened to sighs.

“Thank God, not here, anyway!” he muttered.

Then he walked down the shore towards the harbour. The tide was still high, the wash of the waves touched his feet; on the one hand the dark sea, unbroken by a light, on the other the dull town blinking out and dropping asleep.

He reached the end of the stone pier at the mouth of the harbour, and with his back to the seaward side of the lighthouse he stared down into the grey water that surged and moaned under the rounded wall. A black cloud like a skate was floating across the moon, and a startled gannet scuttled from under the pier steps into the moon's misty waterway. There was nothing else to be seen.

He turned back towards the town, following the line of the quay, and glancing down into the harbour when he came to the steps. Still he saw nothing of the thing he looked for. “But it was high water then, and now it's the ebby tide,” he told himself.

He had met with nobody on the shore or on the pier, but as he passed the sheds in front of the berth for the steamers he was joined by the harbour-master, who was swinging home for the night, with his coat across his arm. Then he tried to ask the question that was slipping off his tongue, but dared not, and only stammered awkwardly----

“Any news to-night, Mr. Quay le?”

“Is it yourself, Capt'n? If you've none, I've none. It's independent young rovers like you for newses, not poor ould chaps tied to the harbour-post same as a ship's cable. I was hearing you, though. You'd a power of music in the everin' yonder. Fine doings up at Ballure, seemingly.”

“Nothing fresh with yourself then, Daniel? No?”

“Except that I am middling sick of these late sailings, and the sooner they're building us a breakwater the better. If the young Deemster will get that for us, he'll do.”

They were nearing a lamp at the corner of the marketplace.

“It's like you know the young Ballawhaine crossed with the boat to-night? Something wrong, with the ould man, they're telling me. But boy, veen, what's come of your hat at all?”

“My hat?” said Pete, groping about his head. “Oh, my hat? Blown off on the pier, of coorse.”

“'Deed, man! Not much wind either. You'll be for home and the young wife, eh, Capt'n?”

“Must be,” said Pete, with an empty laugh. And the harbour-master, who was a bachelor, laughed more heartily, and added----

“You married men are like Adam, you've lost the rib of your liberty, but you've got a warm little woman to your side instead.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Goodnight!”

Pete's laugh echoed through the empty market-place.

The harbour-master had seen nothing. Pete drew a long breath, followed the line of the harbour as far as to the bridge at the end of it, and then turned back through the town. He had forgotten again that he was bareheaded, and he walked down Parliament Street with a tremendous step and the air of a man to whom nothing unusual had occurred. People were standing in groups at the corner of every side street, talking eagerly, with the low hissing sound that women make when they are discussing secrets. So absorbed were they that Pete passed some of them unobserved. He caught snatches of their conversation.

“The rascal,” said one.

“Clane ruined the ould man, anyway,” said another.

“Ross Christian again,” thought Pete. But a greater secret swamped everything. Still he heard the people as he passed.

“Sarve her right, though, whatever she gets--she knew what he was.”

“Laving the child, too, the unfeeling creature.”

Then the sharp voices of the women fell on the dull consciousness of Pete like forks of lightning.

“Whisht, woman! the husband himself,” said somebody.

There was a noise of feet like the plash of retiring waves, and Pete noticed that one of the groups had broken into a half circle, facing him as he strode along the street. He nodded cheerfully over both sides, threw back his bare head, and plodded on. But his teeth were set hard, and his breathing was quick and audible.

“I see what they mane,” he muttered.

Outside his own house he found a crowd. A saddle-horse, with a cloud of steam rising from her, was standing with the reins over its head, linked to the gate-post. It was Cæsar's mare, Molly. Every eye was on the house, and no one saw Pete as he came up behind.

“Black Tom's saying there's not a doubt of it,” said a woman.

“Gone with the young Ballawhaine, eh?” said a man.

“Shame on her, the hussy,” said another woman.

Pete ploughed his way through with both arms, smiling and nodding furiously. “If you, plaze, ma'am I If _you_ plaze.”

As he pushed on he heard voices behind him. “Poor man, he doesn't know yet.”--“I'm taking pity to look at him.”

The house-door was open. On the threshold stood a young man with long hair and a long note-book. He was putting questions. “Last seen at seven o'clock--left alone with child--husband out with procession--any other information?”

Nancy Joe, with the child on her lap, was answering querulously from the stool before the fire, and Cæsar, face down, was leaning on the mantelpiece.

Pete took in the situation at a glance. Then he laid his big hand on the young man's shoulder and swung him aside as if he had been turning a swivel.

“What going doing?” he asked.

The young man faltered something. Sorry to intrude--Capt'n Quilliam's trouble.

“What trouble?” said Pete.

“Need I say--the lamented--I mean distressing--in fact, the mysterious disappearance----”

“What disappearance?” said Pete, with an air of amazement.

“Can it be, sir, that you've not yet heard----”

“Heard what? Your tongue's like a turnip-watch in a fob pocket--out with it, man.”

“Your wife, Captain----”

“What? My wife disa---- What? So this is the jeel! My wife mysteriously disappear---- Oh, my gough!”

Pete burst into a peal of laughter. He shouted, roared, held his sides, doubled, rocked up and down, and at length flung himself into a chair, threw back his head, heaved out his legs, and shook till the house itself seemed to quake.

“Well, that's good! that's rich! that bates all!” he cried.

The child awoke on Nancy's knee and sent its thin pipe through Pete's terrific bass. Cæsar opened his mouth and gaped, and the young man, now white and afraid, scraped and backed himself to the door, saying--

“Then perhaps it's not true, after all, Capt'n?”

“Of coorse it's not true,” said Pete.

“Maybe you know where she's gone.”

“Of course I know where's she's gone. I sent her there myself!”

“You did, though?” said Cæsar.

“Yes, did I--to England by the night sailing.”

“'Deed, man!” said Cæsar.

“The doctor ordered it. You heard him yourself, grandfather.”

“Well, that's true, too,” said Cæsar.

The young man closed his long note-book and backed into a throng of women who had come up to the porch. “Of course, if you say so, Capt'n Quilliam----”

“I do say so,” shouted Pete; and the reporter disappeared.

The voices of two women came from the gulf of white faces wherein the reporter had been swallowed up. “I'm right glad it's lies they've been telling of her, Capt'n,” said the first.

“Of coorse you are, Mistress Kinnish,” shouted Pete.

“I could never have believed the like of the same woman, and I always knew the child was brought up by hand,” said the other.

“Coorse you couldn't, Mistress Kewley,” Pete replied.

But he swung up and kicked the door to in their faces. The strangers being shut out, Cæsar said cautiously--

“Do you mane that, Peter?”